


Gestures

by justaholmesboy



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Deaf Character, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-30
Updated: 2013-11-30
Packaged: 2018-01-03 00:34:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1063558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justaholmesboy/pseuds/justaholmesboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>alternate universe where two accidents, eighteen years apart and seldom discussed, have changed the lives of Holmes and Watson. hopefully for the better in a round-a-bout way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gestures

**Author's Note:**

> first of all, thank you to my supporters for giving me the motivation;  
> Leigh and Mary, thank you for being so kind. Melody, thank you for consulting with me about the preface. And also a massive thanks to my Billy and Yorick - Mort and Tits.
> 
> i hope i can carry this on, as you can see i'll be walking the au through A Study in Pink before branching off to other things with a srs plot  
> hopefully  
> any questions can be directed to my tumblr as well http://justaholmesboy.tumblr.com/
> 
> bear with!  
> x

Abrupt flashes of light, streaks of electricity, blinding explosions; vision perforated by surplus information. The scrapes of metal on metal on solid ground, the piercingly raised voices, the resonant rumbling. A final inexplicably terrifying jolt to the ears. Then nothing. It happened twice, eighteen years apart to two entirely different people with entirely different outcomes but both equally important.  
Life changing events come in many different forms. Anything from a personal epiphany, through to all those lottery wins and out to something altogether more terrifying. The truly terrifying ones don’t happen to many people but they shake everything up and before you know it the rug has been pulled from under your feet, ripples touching and trembling everyone you know. Freefall.

To even the most resolute soldier, being invalided home is a life changing event but Captain John Watson viewed it more like his death sentence. All his years of training made null in one bullet. He stared blankly at the ceiling, head on lumpy pillow in dusty ward, waiting for his executioner to give him his official send-off back home. London was too expensive for his pension but nowhere else could keep his mind occupied enough to keep going. Days merged together in the small flat. It was lifeless and cold, mirroring how John felt. His therapist kept trying to push him on and he wasn't resisting exactly but he got the feeling that every step towards her 'progress' was made by someone manually moving his feet for him. He wanted to follow the advice but it was so hard to know where to begin. The blog was still empty. He felt nauseated by everything he did. His limbs were heavy and would not do as asked, food was like ash in his fevered throat, the world was grey and desaturated. He was resigned to being a lost soul.  
He took a shortcut through the park on the way back to the flat. He reasoned that it might brighten his day somehow but he didn't really believe it. He was dragged out of his thoughts by a familiar voice.  
"John? John Watson?"  
He turned to see an old friend from university; it felt like eons ago in another time entirely. He forced a low smile.  
"Mike."

They sat uneasily on the bench. Mike Stamford was not someone he had expected to see and John didn't feel as though he had the patience for this 'old acquaintances' business right now. The chatter was strained, stereotypical, and made him wince. The sheer banality of the situation was trying John's nerves both figuratively and literally. He hurried to pass the coffee cup to his other hand before the tremor was noticed.  
Mike had picked up on the expenses of London very quickly. It was true, he couldn't bear to be anywhere else but in reality he couldn't afford it at all.  
"Why don't you get a flat share?"  
John couldn't help but laugh at that. He was in his mid-thirties with nothing going for him. No job, no real friends to speak of, not even a hobby.  
"Who would want me for a flatmate?"  
Stamford smiled.

John half-wished he hadn't asked now, even if he meant it to be rhetorical. He was, apparently, the second person to ask that question today. He racked his brain for possibilities but none were leaping to his attention. The taxi pulled up outside of St Bartholomew's Hospital, where Mike worked probably. If this first person was a co-worker then the chances of John knowing who they were was pretty slim.  
Mike lead John through the warren of perfectly clean but sickly pale corridors. The overwhelming residue of chemical scrubbing was beginning to throttle John's sense of smell, and the unforgiving artificial light was contributing towards a headache. He lost track of how long they meandered down the seemingly endless corridors. John almost walked into Mike when he halted in front of a door. He could see through the window that the room beyond was almost in blackout, aside from the ominous glow of a brilliant white lamp spilling into the corridor. Mike pushed the door open, cautiously and with the air of alertness - not something John had ever associated with him.  
The room was darker on the inside thanks to its deceptive vastness. It was a lab; dim, clinical and more than a little foreboding. The small area illuminated by the lamp he had seen contained a massive array of whirring equipment and a face. Even through the bias of the contrasting light, John could see he was a peculiar scarecrow of a man, long slender limbs wrapped in a clean-cut, modern suit. His angular face was defined sharply by the new shard of harsh light spewing through the crack in the door. His attention was focused in on the microscope, mop of fly-away ebony curls falling around the eye piece. The shaft of light from the corridor had alerted him to their presence and he glared up through his eyebrows with pale hawk eyes at the intruders for entering what he no-doubt deemed to be some kind of inner sanctum.  
“... bit different from my day.” John said, almost under his breath.  
Mike waved at the man and he narrowed his eyes, tilting his head precisely to mean something like "what are you doing here and who is he?" John suddenly felt very exposed and unconsciously repositioned himself to stand as tall as he could.  
"Can I borrow your phone? There’s no signal on mine.”  
His voice was low, commanding and filled to the brim with intelligence, but John noticed something a little off about it. He couldn't quite put his finger on it.  
"I left mine in my coat." Stamford said apologetically with a little shrug. Without thinking about what he was saying, John automatically pulled his own out of his pocket.  
"Here, use mine."  
John was vaguely aware of Mike introducing him but he was preoccupied with the shiver in his spine. It felt like the man's glassy eyes were drilling a hole right into John's core as he stared him in the face. The phone was pulled from his hand by long fingers with an abrupt snapping action. He watched as a message was hastily typed and sent on his still glossy but battered phone, and then handed back to him. He reached out to take it back but was stopped mid-movement with words, dropping in his stomach like cannonballs.  
"Afghanistan or Iraq?"  
His mind stopped as well. Who was this man? How did Stamford know him? What was it that was still bugging John about his manner?  
“... Afghanistan. Sorry, how did you-“  
He was interrupted by the door swinging open and a timid but bright woman walking in. He zoned out of the conversation for a few minutes and tried to stop his mind racing. There was something he was missing, he was sure of it. Something glaringly obvious.  
“How do you feel about the violin?”  
“I’m sorry, what?” John wasn’t sure where this was going.  
“I play the violin when I’m thinking and sometime I don’t talk for days on end. Would that bother you? Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other.” This was getting exponentially stranger by the second. The look in the man’s eyes said he was dead serious too. John wrestled his spinning brain to keep speaking.  
“You told him about me?” John turned to look at Mike, throwing an accusatory glare. He saw out of the corner of his eye that the man had tilted his head to keep watching his face. It was off-putting to say the least.  
“Not a word.”  
“Who said anything about flatmates?”  
“I did. Told Mike this morning I must be a difficult man to find a flatmate for. Now here he is, just after lunch, with an old friend clearly just home from military service in Afghanistan. Wasn't a difficult leap.”  
John’s brain still hadn’t woken up properly from the initial shock, and all these additional bombardments weren’t helping. The man’s eyes were still firmly fixed on his face ... no, lips. What.  
“How did you know about Afghanistan?”  
“Got my eyes on a nice little place in central London, we ought to be able to afford it.” John noticed the gently twitching fingers at his side as he spoke. “We’ll meet there tomorrow evening seven o’clock. Sorry, got to dash, I think I left my riding crop in the mortuary.” He moved to leave, but was still keeping an eye on John as he made his way around the tables.  
“Is that it?”  
The man faced him fully again.  
“Is that what?”  
“We've only just met, and we’re going to go and look at a flat?”  
“Problem?”  
John could hardly believe his ears, unable to choke back a chuckle at the ridiculous proposition. “We don’t know a thing about each other. I don’t know where we’re meeting ... I don’t even know your name.”  
A smirk appeared on the man’s face, as if this logic wasn’t enough. He tucked his hands behind his back and lifted his chin high to grin down on John like a wolf eyeing up the weakest lamb.  
I know you’re an Army doctor, and you've been invalided home from Afghanistan. You've got a brother worried about you, but you won’t go to him for help, because you don’t approve of him, possibly because he’s an alcoholic, more likely because he recently walked out on his wife, and I know your therapist thinks your limp's psychosomatic, quite correctly, I’m afraid.” His words left John in awe, but their strange tone was still grating on him for some reason, “That’s enough to be going on with, don’t you think?” He turned to leave, hovering by the door with his back to the room.  
“Wait a second...”  
No reply.  
And then everything fell into place.  
John stepped forward and held the door, instantly catching the man’s attention again. He cleared his throat and stared him straight in the eyes before timidly raising his hands, stick leaning on the door.  
He spoke as he signed; _“sorry if I’m being rude but ... Are you deaf?”_  
The man’s face grew into a broad grin, reaching the steel cold eyes and lighting them with a spark. He turned to face him fully and signed as he replied out loud again. _“Yes.”_  
“... that’s amazing.” John said, mostly to himself but the man just smiled more.  
“The name is Sherlock Holmes, and the address is 221B Baker Street. Afternoon.”  
And he was gone.  
John stared, wide eyed and utterly baffled at Stamford.  
“Yeah, he’s always like that.”


End file.
